Filed in January, JPMorgan’s patent application to issue virtual receipts comprised of tokens on a distributed ledger was published this Thursday, July 19 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The patent application mentions ” … a method for managing asset or obligation-backed virtual receipts on a distributed system may include (1) receiving confirmation of a deposit of an underlying asset, wherein the deposit encumbers the underlying asset; (2) receiving authorization to issue a virtual receipt for the deposited underlying asset; and (3) executing issuance of the virtual receipt by writing the transaction to a distributed ledger.”

A staple of lunch boxes across the UK – Cadbury’s Dairy Milk – will come in a low-sugar version from next year. The new bar will contain 30% less sugar, a bigger reduction than the government had requested. However, the full-sugar version will continue to be sold as usual.

The world’s fourth-largest telecoms provider, Japan’s Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT), has filed a patent for using blockchain tech for contract agreement, according to a U.S. Trademark and Patent Office (USPTO) release on July 19. NTT’s patent application writes that a problem with contracts on blockchain is that each transaction “contains only the electronic signature of the sender” as the “evidence of contract agreement by the receiver is not left in the transaction.”

Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter have jointly announced a new standards initiative called the Data Transfer Project, designed as a new way to move data between platforms. In a blog post, Google described the project as letting users “transfer data directly from one service to another, without needing to download and re-upload it.

Singapore has been hit by what local media is calling the country’s “worst” cyber-attack. Hackers targeting Singapore’s largest health care institution, SingHealth, stole the personal profiles of some 1.5 million patients along with the details of prescriptions for 160,000 others. Included in the latter group was Singapore’s prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, who the Ministry of Health said was targeted “specifically and repeatedly.

Ferrari S.p.A has filed a patent application with the European Patent Office for a forced-induction four-cylinder engine with an electrically operated turbocharger. According to the patent, the engine features a turbine inserted into the exhaust duct that is driven by the exhaust gases. The turbine wheel has no mechanical linkage to a compressor, however – only serving to power an electric generator that stores energy. The energy stored is then used to power an electric drive motor that can drive the wheels and an electrically assisted compressor that forces air into the engine.

Credit card giant Mastercard was granted a patent for a “Method and system for linkage of blockchain-based assets to fiat currency accounts.” A disclosure from the US Patent and Trademark Office explains it relates specifically to the use of centralized accounts to manage fractional reserves of fiat and blockchain currency updated via transaction messages corresponding to fiat- and blockchain-based payment transactions.

Barclays has filed two patent applications relating to the transfer of digital currency and blockchain data storage, both published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) July 19. The first patent describes a system for transferring digital currency from payer to recipient that would securely authenticate the identities of both, as well as validating and recording transactions using public-key cryptography and a digital currency ledger. The second patent relates more narrowly to storing and endorsing data and claims relating to specific entities, using the validation of personal information for Know Your Customer (KYC) checks as a key example.